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Who's Who - Louis Malvy

Louis Malvy (1875-1949) experienced a
turbulent political career which included spells in government, disgraced
exile, and a later return to cabinet government.

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A member of the Radical
Party, Malvy was first elected to the National Assembly in 1906.
Having entered government and held a number of minor ministerial positions,
Malvy's first notable cabinet post was as Minister of the Interior in Prime
Minister Rene Viviani's
pre-war government (having served as commerce minister the previous year).

Remaining on when war broke
out, Malvy - a close colleague (and some charged a puppet) of the radical
Joseph Caillaux - was prominent in resisting calls for dissenters to be
rounded up in 1914 (Carnet B).

Despite the whiff of
suspicion which remained over Malvy's head he remained in government while
numerous Prime Ministers came and went: Viviani,
Briand and
Ribot.
This was almost entirely due to the solid support he received from the
parliamentary radicals and socialists; the government was inevitably obliged
to recognise their influence in holding steady the wartime coalition.

Malvy played a part in
subsidising dissenting - even pacifist - newspapers during the war, which
merely served to increase the suspicion surrounding his activities. He
eventually met his nemesis in Prime Minister
Georges Clemenceau,
who adopted a ruthless approach to those he believed to be guilty of
'defeatism' (i.e. aiding the enemy by one form or another).

Scandal engulfed Malvy in
1917 when one of the newspapers he subsidised, Bonnet Rouge, had been
discovered to be in receipt of German funds; and when French military papers
were discovered in its offices arrests were made, including the newspaper's
administrator and director.

During a secret session of
the Senate in July 1917 Clemenceau openly accused Malvy of betraying French
interests; he was forced to resign on 31 August 1917. This was by no
means the end of the affair. In November he was arrested and charged with
treason.

Tried by a special Senate
commission he was acquitted in August 1918 of the higher charge, but was
nevertheless found guilty of culpable negligence in the performance of his
ministerial duties: he was therefore exiled from France for a period of five
years.

Remarkably Malvy's
political career wasn't finished. Following his return to France from
Spain he was again elected to the Chamber of Deputies and became, briefly,
Minister of the Interior in 1926.

Louis Malvy died on 9 June
1949.

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Saturday, 22 August, 2009Michael Duffy

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